The Apple Club Newsletter, Autumn 2008, Page 5

Everyone knows what is meant by fast food, but what exactly is Slow Food?
The Slow Food movement was founded in Italy by Carlo Petrini in 1989. He wanted to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat. He also felt that as consumers of food we should know where it comes from, love how it tastes and consider how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
In short, Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. Slow food members believe that food should taste good and be good for you; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment and that farm animals should be well treated. Fair means that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work. As part of this, the Slow Food organization is involved in various programmes to help preserve family farms.
Although the organisation is less than 20 years old, it now has 85,000 members in more than 100 countries world-wide. And it is slowly beginning to make an impact in Ireland.
From September 4th to 7th, on the campus of Waterford Institute of Technology, a Terra Madre event was held. Terra Madre, when translated, means Mother Earth, and this event was about celebrating good food, but also about farmers affirming the need for a new agriculture, and lobbying together for policy changes.
The format of the event on the Friday was that groups of stakeholders (farmers, farm organisations, processors, etc) in various farm enterprises, such as beef production, lamb production, pork, milk, fruit, vegetables etc. held individual meetings to decide what might be changed if we were Minister for Agriculture for a day.
In the fruit group, at which I was present, discussions went on for a few hours, but in the end we managed to agree on a few things, such as the importance of highlighting seasonality to consumers, so that for instance, consumers might not look for strawberries in February, when they need to be flown around the World to get to Ireland. We also asked that regulations should not be enforced in too rigid a fashion, as in many EU countries interpretations differ, but usually it seems that the Irish version is stricter.
At the end of the morning sessions, each group got to present their conclusions to Junior Minister Trevor Sargent, and Minister Michelle Gildernew from the Northern Ireland executive. In fairness to the two ministers, after the presentations they made brief speeches which took in many of the points that the various groups had made, which certainly indicated that they understood the points that had been made.
The highlight of the day was the arrival and speech by the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese. She gave a most thoughtful speech about the importance of local foods to society, and we also learned that she grows vegetables and keeps hens in Aras an Uactaran. She urged us all to spend wisely on food, and to ensure that the children of Ireland eat wisely and well. Wonderful sentiments indeed.

Now for the competition, which is open to anyone up to and including 12 years old. First prize is a €20.00 Easons voucher, and the runner(s) up get a €10.00 voucher for use at our farm shop.

Competition questions:
Q.1 What does Terra Madre mean in English?
Q.2 Who is the president of Ireland?
Q.3 What animals does the president keep in the Aras?
Send your answers to: Autumn competition, The Apple Farm, Moorstown, Cahir, Co. Tipperary, before November 28th, 2008.

Winter competition winners:
Well done to our winter competition entrants.
The winner was Jason from Callan.
2nd & 3rd places went to Medbh and Julie from Clonmel.

Newsletter Autumn 2008		page 5 of 5